Russia to undergo auditing

Financial Action Task Force (FATF) experts started their inspection in the Russian government today. They want to know, to what extent the struggle with money laundering is effective in Russia. Russia’s Vice-Premier Alexey Kudrin is sure that next year Russia will be removed from the list of countries which don’t stop money laundering.

The inspection starts today. A FATF delegation consisting of representatives of the organization’s member countries, the USA, France, Germany and Switzerland, will be working in Moscow within the whole week. The inspectors plan to have consultations in the Ministry of Finance, the Central Bank of Russia, the Russian Committee for Financial Monitoring and other departments. On results of the inspection a report is to be issued which is believed to remove Russia from FATF’s black list.

When Russia was included in the black list, the government took every possible measure to quit it as soon as possible. A Committee for Financial Monitoring was created in the RF Ministry of Finance a year ago, which was immediately nicknamed “financial intelligence.” <b>REGIONS.Ru</b> informs, the Committee has already completed several investigations which will soon entail large-scale disclosures of financial abuses among the Russian finance elite. Chairman of the Committee, Viktor Zubkov keeps on saying that the organization is taking every action in close contacts with FATF.

Russian Vice-Premier, Alexey Kudrin met Viktor Zubkov on September 10 and noted considerable progress in the work of the Committee. In Kudrin’s words, the Committee managed to build an effective system to struggle with money laundering within the year since its foundation. The vice-premier says, the system includes enterprises, banks and false individuals that make payments. It was mentioned at that, co-operation of the Committee with financial intelligence in other countries has proved really very fruitful. For example, criminal cases have been registered in connection with financial crimes on the basis of information obtained from the Committee for Financial Monitoring. What a pity that Russia knows little about the success! Hopefully, the Committee will be keeping up closer contacts with the Russian mass media.

Russian authorities hope that the investigations held will improve FATF’s impression of Russia. Let’s see if the foreign commission will be well-disposed to Russia’s success in the struggle with money laundering.